Bruce Cordell played Dungeons & Dragons as a youth, and even recalled playing the original Tomb of Horrors adventure with future fellow game designer Monte Cook when they were in high school together.[2] Cordell was a wrestler and a debater, and also earned a degree in Biology from the University of Colorado.[2] Cordell once worked in the biopharmaceutical industry where he learned to synthesize DNA.[3]

Cordell worked on freelance game design while working in the scientific field, and was eventually hired as a full-time game designer by TSR in 1995.[2] Cordell created the Far Realm for the adventure The Gates of Firestorm Peak (1996).[4]:299 He authored the Sea Devils Adventure Trilogy, The Illithiad, the Shattered Circle, Bastion of Faith, the Dungeon Builder's Guidebook, and the adventures Die Vecna Die!, Return to the Tomb of Horrors, and Return to White Plume Mountain for the AD&D game, as well as the Tangents sourcebook and The Killing Jar adventure for the Alternity game.[2] Cordell and Steve Miller worked on Die Vecna Die! (2010) together, an original adventure that brought an end to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons line.[4]:284 Cordell was also one of the designers working on the first new adventures for the 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons game, beginning with The Sunless Citadel.[2] Cordell and Rich Baker wrote a new version of the Gamma World Roleplaying Game (2010), which was based on the fourth edition D&D rules.[4]:302

Bruce Cordell's RPG work includes many scenarios and sourcebooks; many of which are directly or indirectly concerned with monsters of a Lovecraftian bent (particularly mind flayers and psionics).

Cordell frequently references certain characters, ideas, and organizations in his RPG works, creating a private continuity between various supplements. For example, The Illithiad references the character of Strom Wakeman and the organization known as the Arcane Order (an organization detailed heavily in another of Cordell's works, College of Wizardry). Wakeman was quoted occasionally in Planescape books by Cordell, such as A Guide to the Ethereal Plane, and was instrumental to the course of events in the adventure Dawn of the Overmind (books which were themselves also connected through a phenomenon called an ether gap). Meanwhile, the Arcane Order returned in Tome and Blood as a detailed organization and the basis of a prestige class.

Most of Cordell's work for Malhavoc Press has followed similar patterns, creating a sort of story arc across When the Sky Falls, If Thoughts Could Kill, and Hyperconscious, connected by the god-like Dark Plea and, to a lesser extent, the kureshim race. In an interview with Monte Cook, Cordell himself described his style as including "subtle story threads that connect seemingly unrelated projects".[5]

After working for a few years as a designer on the fifth edition of D&D, Cordell left Wizards in July 2013.[7] In August of the same year he joined Monte Cook at Cook's company Monte Cook Games, LLC (also called MCG) as Senior Designer.[8] Not long after, MCG Kickstarted another RPG, The Strange.[9] The Strange, co-written by Cordell and Cook, was published in August 2014.[10]